


Les Arcanes

by Al_Ardeshir



Series: Hunter and Hunted [1]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: A Variety of Magic Beings, Adult Language, Alternate Earth, Blood, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Flirting with the Goddess of the Underworld, Funky Little Magic Rod, Gore, Gun Violence, Intersex Character, Irreverence Toward (and Mention of) Formerly Widespread Religions, Spin on Legends, Sword Lesbian with Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 00:40:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20249296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Al_Ardeshir/pseuds/Al_Ardeshir
Summary: Heather Durand and her band of obligate homicidals are hired by royalty in a post-magic-apocalyptic alter-Earth to eliminate the Countess's rival, the Nøkk King's descendant, Rasmussen. Magic and might are set to the task, and Heather is invited to a dinner in her honor. She's also enticed to a more permanent position.A new worldbuild-ish thing I've had brewing in my brainmeats for a while.





	Les Arcanes

Rain pattered against leaves overhead and turned Fenngale into a dripping druid’s cathedral - mossy, spongy, with a vegetable perfume underlit by something fungal. Evening chased the tail of an unseen sunset in the west, shading the day’s gray light to solemn blue and the forest’s greens to richer, headier verdance.

Heather stopped, raising a leather-gloved hand in a flat gesture by her shoulder. Behind her, the sound of clumping boots fell silent. 

She twitched her fingers once. “Sulaiman.”

One set of boots resumed the trek forward long enough to reach her and stopped. Sulaiman’s bearded visage turned, dark eyes glittering in the moist forest light, and offered Heather an amused look pointed enough to translate from peripheral sight. “Liege.”  
  
Heather looked away from the break in the trees and offered him a weary sound. “No ‘liege.’”  
  
Sulaiman’s handlebar moustache spread over a grin. “A pool has been poured.” He wound his finger in a vague circle in the air between them. “The one for betting. You should pick the honorific or the others will do something regrettably democratic.”

She answered his gesture, her own frustrated rather than searching. “The majority is always wrong, you know.”

He offered her a Gallic shrug. “Then correct them.”

“I’m trying to. _ Mes canetons _ trundle along behind me and ignore my every word.”

“Not all of them.”  
  
Heather lifted an eyebrow. _ “Non? _Someone among them hasn’t poured coin into your betting pool?”

Sulaiman shook his head. “I mean they listen to you when it’s important.”

_ “Naturalement.” _ She looked back toward the hints of unmanicured lawn ahead and sighed. “‘Liege’ is terrible. Brings to mind lazy, boorish nobles gripping jeweled goblets on one side and a handful of someone’s crotch beneath the table.”  
  
He guffawed at that. “And you haven’t?”  
  
Heather rolled her eyes. “Can you see me with jewels studding my cup?”

“Perhaps not.”

_ “Voilà.” _ She jutted a single leather-clad finger to the clearing ahead. “If Marquand’s task met with success, the Lord of the house and his covenant of blackmailing _ bâtards _ would sleep through their own undeath, if it came right down to it. His hired swords never dine with them nor sup with their dogs, so there’s going to be swordplay whether or not she managed. Perhaps shooting.” She pulled her hand back into a determined fist and met Sulaiman’s gaze. “Do mine come prepared?”

Sulaiman’s grin grew bloodthirsty, teeth displayed in aggression. “We do, and we are ready, Commander.”

Heather grinned back. “Good. And you can tell those gambling fools that ‘Commander’ wins the money.”

He looked back out through the edge of the treeline. “Then drinks are on my silver tonight, Commander.”

Her eyebrow peaked an interrogative. “Oh?”

“I’ve come into some money just now, and I’m feeling generous.” Sulaiman turned back to her and his eyes twinkled.

She snorted. “Who had ‘liege?’”

“Old Doc.”

“Of course.” She tilted her head back in a curt gesture. “Go tell them to line up at the perimeter.” As he turned back, she added, “...you might be paying for the beer tonight, Sulaiman, but tell Doc the whores’ dues will be writ on her tab.”

He laughed, nary a twig snapping beneath his boots as he went to rejoin the others.

\---------------------------

The Commander - the title had stuck - examined herself in the mirror. Thin nose, square jaw, sharp strokes of eyebrow arched over light hazel eyes, all the signals of French aristocracy on her mother’s side met her gaze. Her father’s gifts - thick black hair that fell in tangles past the shoulder, her skin, and unfortunate ears - bespoke an infusion of Elsewhere.

Heather lifted double-handfuls of hair, eyeing the hint of points interrupting the outer arc of her ears, then let the mess fall back. Some full-humans had slight prominence to their incisors with no ties to the Old Arcane, but the ears would draw attention. Tonight she was a guest of honor in a noblewoman’s house and she intended to enjoy the experience. Explanations weren’t conducive to enjoyment.

She passed her gaze over the pants, boots, her coat, and the white rider’s shirt. It wasn’t court finery, but she wasn’t of a mind to join anyone’s coterie. Every glimpse she’d had of “respectable” moneyed living had been framed with teeth as jagged as a hunter’s trap, coin enough or no. Etiquette dressings atop a cage, tension pinned up in sparkling snoods and corset-harnessed ribs. The clothes weren't so confining despite appearances, but the _graces _could choke an armored rhinoceros.

None of the nobility bore their own bloody deeds, either. They poisoned, or they hired people like her and her little army.

_ I’ve become a warlord. _ She gave herself a wry smile. _ Only shy one permanent patron. Maman’s hair would curl. _

Tucking her shirt in, she left the powder room and its cornucopia of vanity tools, boots meting out a confident rhythm in the hallway. She passed servants and a few loitering members of Sarechay’s house on her way to the double doors, passing quiet nods and greetings, never having to look up to meet another’s eyes.

Another gift from the Old Arcane. Like the teeth, her height - all six feet of it - fell within the human bracket, but wasn’t human. The awkwardness it’d posed as a girl was a boon now; none of the social clusters of men became troublesome, satisfying themselves with nods of greeting or exchanging glances with their fellows. Eyes wandered, but bravado discovered itself impotent, and that discovery kept the odd interested glint from resolving.

She supposed the guns at her hips might’ve adjusted the scales, too.

Heather splayed her hand over one of the double doors and pushed it in, joining the hostess and her favored court in the dining room. She marked changes in the air heraldic of crowds - warmth, a lazy stir in response to movement, and the humidity of too many ale-clouded exhales like a weighted patina on her skin. It was jungly and unpleasant. As she removed her coat and hung it over her forearm, faces powdered and not turned in her direction and their owners began to clap. She bowed, arms held wide, coat dangling from her left and her right boot forward, heel down and toe up. The crowd saw this and redoubled their applause.

“Bleedin’ man o’ the hour!” A man of enormous proportions and enormous red beard patted Heather’s shoulder, almost making her stagger as she stood from the bow. “If’n you don’t mind, lass.” 

Heather grinned at him, accepting the tankard he offered and feeling something like relief at his artless good cheer. _ “Bien sûr, mon cher.” _ She lifted the ale in a small salute, noting the dwindling applause and resumption of conversation around them. “So long as I’m not last to the bar, call me to the toast however you like.”

He laughed the laugh of someone discovering the first heady edges of inebriation, tossing a comradely arm across her shoulders. He tipped his own ale to hers and tapped rims. “Stout heart, Durand. Should you take a likin’ to one o’ my sons and him you, won’t hear a peep o’ protest outta me.”

Heather tapped the glass bottom of her drink to her chest in lieu of her hand, affecting regret. “I’m afraid the attentions of any son would be wasted on me, _ cher.” _She gave him a conspiratorial half-smirk. “But I have been known to unsteady the frames in a few daughters’ bedchambers.”

Pure cheek reshaped his eyes to half-moons. His own grin spread his moustache over the rim of his cup and he drank deep, loosing a resonant belch into the room. “P’rhaps we’re family sommat back, anyway.” The arm over Heather’s shoulders disappeared and he switched drinking hands, offering her a massive paw. “Roebuck.”

Heather shook. Roebuck’s hand engulfed hers, but he kept the pressure confident rather than aggressive, and she decided she liked this man. _ “Enchantée.” _ She released his hand and gestured toward the table. “The assembled will have our heads if we don’t sit down.”

“Bugger ‘em.” Roebuck drained a little more of his beer, turning in the direction of the crowd despite his proclamation, and they approached the food-laden table together.

Snoods sparkled in electric torchlight above, brooches and other finery - or trumpery in some cases, perhaps - added their own dazzling refractions to the mix. Heather felt relief in that only half of those assembled were courtly; many others were decked in trapper fur, rider’s jackets like her own, and the kinds of fitted boots found on men o’ the hunt. The lengthy stretch of table was a solid thing, less a well-appointed statement of taste and more longhall fortitude. Wise, she thought, given assortment of dishes sprawled across it feast-style.

Heather looked toward the far end of the table to the Countess Sarechay. The Countess was a fair hand shorter than Heather, with mousy brown hair done up in one of the snoods making faerie fire of the overhead light. A blue dress left pale shoulders bare. A look to her hostess’s neckline revealed no telltale shoreline of powder; the Countess was naturally clear-complected.

Sarechay’s sharp blue eyes shifted from her conversation partner to Heather, quick, assessing, not lingering. 

Heather noted it, eyeing the mixed company again - huntsmen, courtiers, a few others in the kinds of smart dress marking them for merchants or diplomats - discounting her earlier assumptions. The Countess was no fool. She knew who she was entertaining, and the choices in company were a mix of inheritance and working folken. The statement of affluence was tempered with a thought to Heather’s comfort.

_ I’ve been had. _ Seulement un peu, _ but there is more to this job, I think. _

Or, she mused, the job hadn’t yet begun in earnest.

Roebuck followed her up the table and took his seat next to the head place. The Countess looked away from her conversation partner at him and offered him a genuine-looking smile. “Mister Roebuck. You’ve done the court’s job in greeting our guest of honor.”

Roebuck moved his tankard in dismissal and sloshed his ale. “Talkin’ is all.” He belched in the direction of a sour-looking man seated opposite him. “Don’t get any funny ideas about stuffin’ me in his getup and paradin’ me around.”

The sour-looking man, one Shakespeare might’ve deemed fit for execution in the playwright’s broad distaste for all lawyers, narrowed his eyes. “I’d think finer materials would strain to contain your enthusiasm.” He dusted his blue velvet-clad arm.

“Aye, delicates ain’t for men o’ work.” A glimmer of something less than charitable metastasized in Roebuck’s expression. “S’pose all the give you’d need in your coat is for bendin’ to kiss someone’s-”

Heather sneezed, loud, then looked guiltily to both men sniping across the table. _ “Excusez-moi. _Still a little of the outdoors addling my nose.” She smiled placidly.

_ “À tes souhaits.” Sew-hats - _ Sarechay’s unfamiliarity flavored the French. Heather looked back to her with a surprised eyebrow heft and the Countess favored her with a grateful look. “I’m pleased you could join us, Miss Durand.”

Heather didn’t sit so much as fall back into the roomy, sturdy chair like one claiming a throne, angling herself, planting an elbow on one of the wide oak armrests and curling her fingers under her chin. “‘Miss’ sets a terrible tone for an evening, _ n’est-ce pas? _‘Commander’ will do, or ‘Durand.’” 

“Commander, then.” Sarechay’s thin-lipped mouth quirked faintly. “I suppose we should begin the meal before anyone’s delicates grow strained.”

The object of her reproach uttered a sound that might’ve been a snarl in a less diligent adherent to the velvet regard.

The Countess sat, aided by one of the wandering staff who’d stopped to push in her chair. The sour-looking man looked chastised and unhappy. Roebuck looked oblivious and Heather wondered how genuine it was.

Others claimed seats around the table. As they did, Heather took in a bit more of the room.

A thin stratus of pipe smoke made a slovenly lurch in the air above, painting white-yellow coronas around electric bulbs in the hanging fixture. Reeds and wildflowers splayed artfully from carnival glass vases, each on a varnished stand. A few paintings were hung above these, women posed stiffly in dresses gone too voluminous in the hips for modern fashion. Men in other paintings stood poised with swords downturned next to them like prop-canes. Heather noticed nearly all had faintly cheerful rosiness about the nose and cheekbones - gin blossoms in reality, the work of a brushslinger politic enough in their trade to misrepresent their employers’ florid faces with _ petits mensonges _.

Areas undisguised by painting or drapery boasted simple gray stone. There wasn’t space enough for a true echo, but it nevertheless lent something weighty to the voices around Heather. She imagined the room was likely cool when bare of crowds and the doors open to circulate air.

Heather let her jacket fall over an armrest and sat up, lifting her cup for the woman making rounds and pouring from a pitcher. The woman herself was interesting to look at - more bar wench than servant, and gifted in a way that lent much to a blouse’s neckline - but the downturned gaze and businesslike set to her mouth dampened the Commander’s flirtatious thanks to neutrality. The servant made off, and Heather brought the cup under her nose, sniffed, rearranging the evening’s plan against putting a dent in the household supply of alcohol. The new stuff was sweet, almost tangy. Common opinion slanted otherwise, but mead meant business. It would hit harder than watered-down beer in the heat.

A number of hands began finding serving dishes without preamble. One merchant paused, head downturned, speaking quietly to himself. _ “Bismillahi wa 'ala baraka-tillah.” _He was almost inaudible, but enough made its way past that soft chorus gratifying to any chef’s ear - the sounds of dining’s first ritual taken with unreserved gusto - that Heather’s memory filled in the blanks.

Heather waited until he lifted his head. He did, catching her eye and the lack of food in her hand, and spared a thankful smile.

Heather offered a nod in return. She reached out and grabbed hold of a roasted bird’s leg, twisting it off, and dropped it on her plate before claiming a tureen of peas. She didn’t know if ritual had been postponed given tonight’s company and the proliferation of alcohol, but Heather offered mental thanks to no one in particular that the God of stained glass rosettes and fastidiousness wouldn’t be presiding over the meal. Sumptuousness and guilt were ruinous to digestion.

The Countess wasn’t opposed to conversation during the meal, however. She plucked bread from a loaf and spoke to Heather. “I’m told Rasmussen’s compound has been cleared of…” she paused, “...leavings. I hadn’t expected you to tidy up afterward.”

Heather pried some bread from the same loaf after Sarechay. “We do not, normally.” She lifted it to her nose and breathed in appreciatively. _ Fresh. _“When payment is generous, so are we.”

“I see. It’s certainly saved my house some doing.”

Roebuck gestured between the Countess and Heather, reaching toward the great lump of bird on the table. “Toss a growin’ lad a scrap, C’mander, would’ya?”

Heather reached out and tore a generous pull of meat from the middle, ignoring the cutlery, and brought it over to his plate. She allowed all but the skin to drop, letting gravity tear it free. “Spoils of war, _ cher.” _

“Aye, as ya do.” Roebuck pinched the crackling strip next to Heather’s fingers and pulled, splitting it in two. They tapped ends in a salute. Roebuck leaned back and dropped his share somewhere into the froth of his beard.

Heather dropped her spoils into her mouth and licked her fingers before she spoke again. “The leavings were burned. My First Officer oversaw the rites, what little there were. _ Seulement _enough to settle any loitering spirits for a time, but you know the way of things.”

Sarechay agreed. Her words were gravid, but her tone was thoughtful. “You do not claim the land?”

Heather shook her head and bit into her bread, speaking around the mouthful. _ “Non. _Too many of mine are touched with the Old Arcane to keep the dead at peace.”

“Hence my town receiving their custom.”

“Mhm.” Heather smooshed bread into her peas. “Split to townsfolk half and half, your graveyards and tombs should suffer nothing for us being here.”

“None among you is a null?”

“Only our doctor.” Heather shrugged. “We’re a fighting force. You know how it is with nulls.”

Heads - including Roebuck’s - bobbed in understanding. The necromantic fields generated by most humans required nulls among them to prevent undeath and spirit retention by the living plane, more so when those humans bore touches of the Old Arcane. Nulls, humans gifted with counteractive fields, tended toward the noncombative, as though their natures abhorred creating more dead upon which necromantic fields might exert influence.

The Countess still sounded thoughtful. “We’ve an unusual number of nulls in town.”

Heather offered her a knowing look. “Enough to placate Rasmussen’s former holdings?”

The sour-looking man spoke up. “More, actually. My calculations suggest that we could balance the effect even from a significant Old Arcane if we were to hire-”

Sarechay held up a hand, gesturing half toward him and half for him to quiet. “Suffice it to say, quite a few.” She glanced at him meaningfully before returning her attention to Heather. “Bale, my appointed council head.”

Heather hid her amusement at the name behind her bread. “A pleasure.”

Bale looked ready to speak again but the Countess beat him to it. “I’d waste away at night thinking we’d bored you at your own celebratory dinner, Commander.” The gems in her hair twinkled as she tilted her head. “Perhaps a recounting of your recent deeds? If you don’t mind providing the entertainment, that is.”

“I do not mind, although the tale is one of swords and guns. Magic, too.” Heather lifted her tankard and took a swallow, expecting ale and receiving a honeyed reminder that the fare had changed, then set it down again. “Death is my trade.”

Bale looked ready to object - and perhaps return whatever he’d eaten to his plate - but Roebuck patted the table and caused several of their drinks to sway in their cups. “Can’t think of a way better’n that! Set us off proper, lass.”

The councilman paled. He seemed unhappy with the prospect of a violent story, and he’d winced at “death.” Heather considered the Countess anew.

Sarechay ignored her appointed’s discomfiture. “Given the nature of the recently departed, I’d enjoy the details, Commander.”

_ What occupies that mind, Countess Mouse? _

Whatever Bale’s objection, the rest of the diners nearby seemed interested, their conversations gone _ sotto voce _or forgotten.

Heather took a lubricating swing of mead, lifting the roasted leg in one hand, and sat back in her chair. There was a goodish amount of space to her left. She swung her leg up over the armrest and gestured with the drumstick.

_ “Mes canetons _and I performed splendidly. I’ll try to do it justice.”

\---------------------------

Cricketsong bored into the night and faded at their approach. The field encapsulating the rear of Rasmussen’s manor had gone to seed, the upward slope netted with streamers of gravel that wove the expansive rise of weeds and hay into quilted domes. What might’ve been good moonlight on a clear night was diluted through the clouds, a feeble thing leaching color and nuance from the world.

From west and east, dark figures moved along the gravel rivers up the slope in trios and quartets. The ungainly stomping from the woods was absent now; steps were taken ball to heel, feet landed only where shortgrass emerged from beneath the little rivulets of stones, and bodies remained low-slung. Heather’s people moved with awareness and coiled energy, her _ canetons _ become _ panthères. _

Heather stopped, crouching lower, and knew her group had done likewise behind her.

Stillness. Waiting. She hated this part.

A minute passed, and a single stalk of hay twitched on the other side of the field near the rear grounds’ gate. Voices from within, night conversation between whatever passed for Rasmussen’s guards o’ the watch, never paused. One of them laughed.

Heather waited.

It twitched again, this time twice. Despite her itchy sword hand, Heather grinned in the dark. To watch Sulaiman work was to witness living art.

Another minute. The stalk twitched again, three times. Still the guardsmen chatted amiably behind wrought iron.

A slim rod shot from the other side of the field into the air, swinging end over end, silently. Had she not been looking for it, Heather wouldn’t have seen it. It went over the gate and began to fall. Then it burst in a thin, unremarkable cloud which dispersed almost as quickly.

Ten seconds. Fifteen.

A voice grew just distinct enough to be heard. “D’you feel something?”

“Huh?”

The first voice sounded querulous. “Feel something. I dunno, like… nevermind.”

The other voice snorted. “Feel like if the air gets any wetter the leeches’ll swim outta the river and right up to my pretty, helpless legs, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not that.” The first voice sighed. “Dogs’ ears are twitchin’ again.”

“Just squirrels. Maybe a deer.”

“Maybe it’s just your pretty legs getting too close to my pretty le-_whatthehell?” _

Where the cloud had dispersed, luminescence now took hold. It fell in a thick sheet of haunting light-spicules across the compound’s southern grounds like a slow cascade of metallic dust under fey light. Growing amethystine closer to the point where wrought iron gate met sky, the brilliant magic wove between droplets as freely as though it'd been conjured whole-cloth from the ocean itself.

“The damned hell is this?” The sound of a chair backing rudely across flagstones stuttered the air. “I’ll go alert-”

The sound of canine paws patting across wet stone joined the first voice, followed by a meaty report of bodies hitting the same stone. There were one or two puzzled whines, a few more slapping thuds, then nothing.

They waited.

The single filament of hay twitched twice.

As one, Heather and her people stood in the weeds and lined up along the fence. Through the bars, a number of unmoving humanoid bodies lay in artistically-devoid heaps between smaller, soggy piles of German shepherd. Heather heard Sulaiman approach but kept her eyes on guards and dogs alike, waiting for any sign the magic had failed.

Sulaiman wound his fingers around the topmost horizontal bar and spoke, apparently satisfied with his work. “The rain is fortunate. And the humidity. I wasn’t certain there’d be enough to carry my song.”

Heather mirrored his grip on the bar and began testing its weight-bearing capacity with firm jerks. “What would you have done if it stopped?”

He shrugged. “The same thing the Old Arcane of the water did when ships ventured too close to their territory. Signalled to plug your ears and delivered the song personally.”

Both satisfied, they renewed their grips and vaulted over the fence, the others following their lead. Heather landed solidly on the other side and reached out to steady her friend. “They used to eat their captures, _ non?” _

He stood, then knelt and checked the guards nearest them, a pair of men and most likely the talkative duo from earlier. “Not often, Commander. A few for the legend, but to be quite frank, mankind makes for miserable dining.”

“I won’t ask.”

“Thank you.” Despite the genteel overtone, Sulaiman sounded relieved.

As they pressed on, navigating outdoor furniture and the relative relief of flat stone after the fields, quiet forms in dark clothes went about the business of securing the rear grounds. Guards o’ watch became guards o’ gardening shed, bound and gagged before their bodies were lobbed unceremoniously between sacks of rich soil. The dogs were relocated to a wire pen next to the shed, one of Heather’s men moving water bowls inside before closing them in.

Heather and Sulaiman waited, watching. Sulaiman spoke softly. “You’ve never mentioned what you were given by the Old Arcane.”

She smiled and looked out over the rapidly assembling troops. _ “C’est vrai.” _She lifted her hand and beckoned, turning toward the rear entrance of the manor. “Perhaps, one day, I’ll know enough about it to tell you.”

Light spilled from windows overhead, but those on ground level remained dark. It wasn’t a guarantee, but - if their first encounter was any indication - it was likely few if any guards had been posted on the lowest floor.

The trouble would be upstairs, as always it was.

Heather twitched her fingers by her shoulder again. They moved in.

\---------------------------

“A fightin’ siren, I’ll be buggered right into the castle walls!” Roebuck’s eyes twinkled and he leaned on his own armrest, fascinated. “Not yankin’ my chain a bit, though, are ye?”

Heather agreed. “Sulaiman is a treasure beyond reckoning. His Arcana is but the least of it.”

The lawyerly-looking man - Bale - squinted. “You mentioned being of the Old Arcane, yourself. What-”

“Oh, stuff it, man!” Roebuck’s voice held impatience and just a trace of indulgence. “Let the lass talk. She’s weavin’ us a good one, too, knows enough not to spoil all the mystery early, like. Take a page outta the Commander’s book.”

The Countess remained quiet. She was, however, perched close to the table, away from the back of the chair.

Heather felt something slide against her right boot, the one not hanging air where she’d tossed her leg over the left armrest. Just a careful swipe, then another. And another. Rubbing. Whatever it was, it was too small to be one of Roebuck’s monstrously-sized boots.

Not Roebuck, and certainly not Bale. They were too busy bickering like-

_ I’ll be damned. _Heather’s eyes flicked between the two men. Roebuck’s easy intrusion into Bale’s line of questioning. Bale’s argumentative air and easy capitulation. Heather smiled into her tankard and sipped more to cover her amusement than in deference to thirst. They were as charmingly mismatched as jester’s slippers.

The dainty something against her boot made another pass. Insistent. Heather looked up and met the Countess’s politely interested gaze.

The corner of Sarechay’s mouth quirked. Faint, but there.

_ Entertainment, Countess Mouse? I can entertain. _She shifted her boot carefully in the direction from which she expected the inquisitive interloper originated. The interloper seemed to jerk in surprise, then made another pass. Sarechay herself maintained her composure above the table, but there was a slow, almost possessive rhythm to the stroking.

_ I have a feeling you can, too. _

\---------------------------

Sulaiman flattened himself against the wall next to a window and Heather mirrored him on the other side.

“We do have a few minutes, Commander.” Sulaiman’s voice seemed musically pitched, as though the magic had left a lingering trace of itself in his cords. She supposed it had; her own arcana evidenced its passage in a similar way.

_ “Oui.” _Heather tilted her head back and blinked accumulated drizzle away before returning her gaze to him. “Wouldn’t trade our good feline brigand. I prefer reliability over speed.”

“'Cat burglar,' Commander.”

“My phrasing feels more dignified.”

His beard moved with the smile beneath. “You know I’ll discover it if given time, no matter if you cling to being mysterious.”

Heather squinted. “I did say I don’t know enough about it. There’s no call for you to employ your more cloak-and-dagger skills to an empty task, _ mon ami.” _

Sulaiman shook his head. “You flirt with dishonesty like the faerie Old Arcane were said to have done before the world disavowed their magic. And you’re not a bit Irish.”

_ “Certainement pas. _Though they do boast the loveliest women-”

“Commander.” His tone bulged with mixed endearment and weariness. “I will hold it unto that place where no men speak. You know I will.”

Heather regarded him anew. Bits of the Old Arcane all pronounced themselves in keeping with old tales as much as power, seemingly without predictability or association with type. Heather herself, despite owing none of her lineage to faerie, could obfuscate but not lie. Sulaiman, although no djinn he, was nevertheless bound to his word. The rules once segregated between the Old Arcane races had dispersed strangely when humans and the oldest magic beings occasionally sought comfort with each other in the changing times, when products came of those unions. Those with banshee in their background often found the sigils of Abraham’s God unbearable. The Rodia - those of wererat ancestry who still moved and lived collectively - found their mobility curbed within a salt circle.

And it was true. She didn’t know enough to satisfy herself. But to assuage Sulaiman’s curiosity? There might be enough for that, and he’d earned his way into her confidence everywhere else. Heather puzzled over why she bothered hiding it at all. It wasn’t as though the prejudices of old had lasted in this brave new world.

She took a breath.

“You know the old stories, _ oui? _Some from this land, some from that. And roving sorts, the reason the legends found themselves echoed in a place with no trade or geographical tie.”

He nodded, sending droplets falling from the edges of his hair. “Shapechangers. And most bodies of water had their merfolk.”

Heather smiled. “Perhaps one day you’ll tell me where the water calls you.”

He shrugged.

_ Or not. _“Shapechangers. Common and uncommon, the least common being-”

Sulaiman held up a hand in negation. “A bat you are not. Those were reportedly very petite in their human forms, and you avoided petite with room to spare.” He dropped his hand and looked sincerely curious. “Surely not? Your hearing is adequate insofar as I’ve known you, but not exceptional.”

“You’re not wrong. None among my father’s side took to the skies in anything save dreams.” Heather felt the corner of her mouth curl up. “But werebats were like the small fish living along the predator shark’s flank. Like the_ poisson pilote. _”

He opened his mouth to speak, and immediately suffocated whatever’d been slated to emerge as a high trill sounded across the wet dusk.

Silently and synchronously, they stood and reached for handholds in the depressions between stones, climbing. From her vantage point, Heather could see a few others scaling in tandem, her panthers become spiders. Her people did nothing well if not adapt, and few could credit secondary forms anywhere in their lineage. Her _ cat burglar _had disarmed whatever wards had protected this place from unsolicited ingress.

Up, Heather swung wide around a too-broad window embellishment and mostly clung to a decorative mock-trellis, Sulaiman making good time on the other side with his access to a wider portion of the wall. Up, first testing the thin extrusion marking divides between one floor and another, finding it too slippery, reaching past to the next layer of indented stone. An errant strand of ivy found its way around her gun holster and pulled, necessitating a pause and extraction, then up. Up and up, another extrusion. Another window. This one spilling light into the drizzle.

They locked gazes from either side. Heather could see the anticipatory hardness in Sulaiman’s eyes.

He pointed to the window.

She shook her head and made a punching gesture that fell just short of the light. _ No. If we want the glass gone, it’ll be the old-fashioned way. _ She gestured near the bottom of the window then forked her fingers upward. _ Shards. _

He shrugged, then pulled at the clasp of his cloak. It fell free, and he balled the fur-lined top in his hand as if preparing a throw. He gestured toward the bottom of the window with a pushing motion that left the length of the cloak swaying, the fabric starry with drizzle. 

Heather pulled a revolver from its holster, tossed it up in a soft spin, caught it on the barrel, and swung. The impact traveled back to her hand as the pane shattered and she pulled the gun away, avoiding a trapezoid glass guillotine falling free of its upper frame. An alarmed voice too distant to threaten their entry uttered something in an angry staccato of syllables. She scraped the bottom and side of the window so much as she could, then reholstered her gun.

Sulaiman punched his side free of debris, his hand wrapped in the cloak, then pushed the bundle of heavy fabric through. Quick but careful, both stepped on the covered window frame and let themselves in.

It was a dayroom of sorts, decadent, the kind of arrangement designed exclusively for show. Settees bracketed the window, royal blue brocade with gold - what else, Heather thought, for the descendent of the Nøkk king Rasmus? - depicting sleek equine shapes breaking from a zigzag cascade of light blue embroidery. The same horse-and-water theme was mirrored everywhere - in paintings, a sculpture atop a marble stand, even the rug upon which glass slivers glittered like pretty threats. The space was narrow and long with two doorways on either side of its far end.

Sulaiman’s hand rose, fingers working, producing a number of tiny, uninteresting blades that wove and whirled with dizzying alacrity. He watched the entryways ahead while Heather redrew a gun with the left hand and pulled the sword from its scabbard along her back with her right.

“Sulaiman.”

“Mmm.”

“The nøkk?”

He shook his head. “Piano and viola, I’m afraid, Commander.”

Heather rolled the cylinder and heard the satisfyingly dull clink of a bullet settling in the firing chamber. _ “Aidez-moi, mon ami.” _

They trotted down the hall to meet the sound of approaching footsteps and Sulaiman spoke hastily. “Different instruments, but we both know music. Charmers cannot charm one another.”

“Noted.”

They split from each other, one to a doorway. Heather ran half-crouched through the right, giving her sword a single wrist-limbering turn and lifting it to meet a guardsman too caught in his own inertia to stop himself. Her rapier found home in the hollow of his throat and wide blue eyes met hers as he choked, reaching for the blade and jerking, his weapon lost, a spitting pendant of blood growing where bare skin had been a moment before.

She planted a boot in his chest and shoved him off, pulling her weapon free. As he canted leftward and slid down the wall, she pulled back the hammer of her revolver and squeezed, announcing herself with a deafening report that punched lead into the next guard’s chest. Spin, click, and a third guard was downed in fresh thunder.

_ Easy, only six rounds in the machine. Four, now. _

The next guard came in from a doorway up ahead, this one lighter on her feet and sword at the ready. Heather grinned, flicking blood off the end of her own blade and gesturing upward, two jerks of a come-hither.

They moved in as fencers, profiles slim-hewn in side-facing stances, and began the old dance of swing and parry. Heather tested on the side of caution, noting the blond guard - pretty in a sparing and businesslike way - was doing likewise. Swings direct and telegraphed, blocked, another unaccountably predictable thrust. It wasn’t caution, either, but a routine as old as the art itself.

Heather felt a mixture of relief and irritation in her chest. This one was fresh off the learner’s field, weaving patterns. Predictable was both a blessing and a curse; those fresh off the ‘prentice mat were invariably guard-heavy and difficult to tease into overconfidence. Heather could back away and test the other woman’s patience, but it’d lose her ground and assumed no reinforcements would arrive to truncate the effort. She could wear the other woman down, a match of practice rhetorical and practice applied, but it would take too long. There was little sound from Sulaiman’s side of things; Sulaiman was a quiet man even when introducing others to the afterlife. There was no way to know if he’d run into trouble and time was, in a siege, of the essence.

Heather pressed. Her swings grew forceful, measured in introduction of strength. The other woman began losing ground, eyes narrowed and a snarl tugging at her upper lip, her footwork growing panicky. There was no give in her blocks, but Heather didn’t need give. They moved down the long line of carpet toward an occupied armor stand. Thrust, an s-curve that moved the other’s rapier away, and Heather planted a boot on the other woman’s sternum in a shove. With a sound of dragging sword tip over the carpet and an unlovely expelling of air, the guard was pressed back into the armor.

Her shirt grew three new buttons alternating with the standard, the former conical, and the cloth beneath them bloomed red. The blonde guard dropped her rapier to the floor with a muted thump and reached up as though to examine the additions to her ensemble, hand falling away, and reached again. She looked up with burning accusation.

Heather shrugged at her and patted a spiky arm plate just behind the skewered guard. “My compliments, _ cher.” _ She then gave the guard’s own softer, fleshier shoulder a brisk pat. “Be a good girl and give my regards to Hel on your way through. Tell her I’ll stop by for a drink.” She leaned into the cloud of blonde hair and spoke for another’s ears, whispering. _ “Or visit the living world and come get me, ma belle.” _

She waited, feeling hair against her cheek begin to shudder as the body to which it was attached shook with violently receding life. The window was small, always so small, but perhaps there would be something.

As the guard’s seizing abated and she gurgled her last, Heather finally heard it.

_ “Bring your thirsts and I’ll quench them.” _

Heather felt the smile ache in her cheeks, a bitter thing. She stood, listening, but the sounds of fighting were too many and too muffled by Rasmussen’s fondness for plush living to know if any had followed the four she’d dispatched.

She took a moment to consider reloading and let it pass. Worse to worst, she could draw the other. She made her way through to a broader hallway with both weapons ready. There were bodies littering the space, marionettes with their strings cut and discarded. Rasmussen’s guard, now fleshy detritus and in need of a thorough burning.

And economical Sulaiman, plucking his trade’s tools out of them like quills. He looked up and his facial hair moved with a satisfied return smile. He sounded almost breathless. “Down further. Your quarry is upstairs.”

She nodded and left him to it, jogging and avoiding pools of both blood and body, occasionally leaping over one or the other in an increasing urgency to meet the head of this estate’s hydra.

_ Charmers cannot charm one another. _

There were stairs framed by balustrades, wide near the bottom and highlighted again in blue. Horses had been solicited from the wood by a clever artisan’s hands at either end. She took the stairs two at a time, running, feeling the rush of combat singing in her veins, headier than any song of Sulaiman’s people. The top of the stairs was more foyer than hallway, a piece of theater preceding double wooden doors filigreed with gold. There were, as could’ve been predicted, a depiction of equine shapes emerging from a shoreline on both.

“No subtlety for you, _ non.” _She moved at speed to the doors and tested the brass lever with a pair of fingers and kept her hold on the rapier’s handle. It was unlocked.

She entered, stepping softly.

Rasmussen sat on a short brocade bench matching the ones in the room she’d first entered, his posture upright, lithe and posed with a violin resting base against his shoulder. He held a horsehair bow poised just above the strings and his head angled in an almost gracious nonverbal welcome. Whitish-blonde hair curled just above the shoulder, echoed in slightly bushy eyebrows. He was handsome, Heather saw it, and saw that Rasmussen himself knew it. There was a phenomenal smugness in the jut of his square jaw.

Heather ignored it. “You know why I’m here.”

Rasmussen’s voice fell wildly outside Heather’s expectation, almost reedy. “Sarechay’s newest folly.” His eyes fell down and up in an examination she found tiresome. “She paid well, I see.”

Heather felt something rise within before she had time to decide, greylit veins crawling over her field of vision and, she knew, making her eyes strange from the outside.

_ I hope you’re wrong, Sulaiman. _

She knew what was happening - had, in fact, watched it in the mirror despite old legends claiming it impossible - her eyes bleeding their color and shattering with climbing trails of gray, black, and white. It'd never quite stolen her vision, but divested the world of color and redoubled its depth.  
  
In most cases, fascinating.

Laughter disabused her of hope. Rasmussen sounded positively delighted. “How exotic! Come here, then, why don’t you? The others will have to die, but you? You might be useful to me yet.”

Heather let the Gaze drain from her eyes, stilling as the wave of nausea rolled and passed. She stepped forward and whirled her sword.

Rasmussen offered a thin, disappointed sigh, and touched his bow to the strings. 

Where his voice failed to charm, music like molten emotion rolled through the room. It was the sound of a violin played in rarified air so clear it might’ve sang, itself, in accompaniment. Suddenly the weight of humidity seemed distant and ephemeral in the mind, something days gone and swept elsewhere to make way for this music. The stoic would weep and the world would flare its cloud cover like skirts in its dance around the sun.

Heather felt a tug that fled as swiftly as the Gaze’s passing nausea and stabbed forward with her rapier, jabbing below Rasmussen's ministrations, lifting and cutting the violin’s strings. He cried out in mixed pain and fury as the strings snapped back and scored his fingers, leaving whiplines of red. Dropping the ruined instrument and pushing angrily to his feet, he reached to the protruding shelf built into the wall behind him.

His hand neared a sack of cylindrical pellets and Heather’s breath caught in her throat, but it was ignored in favor of a pot inscribed with the symbol of Abraham’s god - a cross lacquered in humble brown that looked at odds with the decadence of the room. He flung it at her with an unlikely but accurate swing.

She leaned right and felt the heavy ceramic tug at her hair in passing, but the object itself hadn’t been relevant.

Water spattered the side of her face and across her shirt in a wide path.

Rasmussen gurgled an ugly, triumphant sound.

Heather stilled, running her fingers along the side of her face and capturing some of the water with her fingers. She held them in front of her eyes, droplets crawling and pooling in the crevices between. She looked at Rasmussen and offered him a placid smile before putting fingertips to her mouth and sucking the moisture away.

He was silent as she pulled them back with an audible sound. She wiggled them in a cheeky wave. “Flavorless as sanctity, _ cher. _Hardly even an excuse for libation.”

He snarled and stood. Heather’s amusement diminished as Rasmussen’s body gave up its trim shape, bulging, morphing, shedding the confines of an athletic Dane and moving with a murmuring stretch of skin and whine of osseous transubstantiation to something quadrupedal. He dropped to all fours and his arms stretched, cracked, stiffened. His face drew outward with a multitude of wince-inducing fractures, growing long. Equine.

_ Merde. Merde and damn my eyes! _

The shapechangers hadn’t died out after all, or had returned. Rasmussen was a nøkk in truth, the Scandinavians’ kelpie. A water horse of war.

Heather whispered something obscene and pulled the hammer on her revolver. _Kelpies and selkies are still fae. Still fae. Still iron in these bullets, let it be so. _

She squeezed.

Thunder rattled glass in the windows and shifted items on the protruding shelf. A hole appeared where pectoral muscles had become the green-pelted breast of a horse. Rasmussen squealed, the sound somehow both horselike and still reminiscent of his whiny human voice. Blood - no, something too viscous and half-clotted to be blood - emerged from the hole.

She waited, hoped, and Rasmussen backed with an uneven stamp of hooves into the wall, his formidable new posterior bumping the shelf and bringing a number of unguent jars crashing to the floor.

The hole grew grey around its rim and smoked. Heather took her finger off the hammer and smiled.

Impossible creature of legend or no, Rasmussen’s vulnerability was good old-fashioned iron. Heather watched as the gray spread from the wound outward, growing anew in other places, around his muzzle and with an almost eager metastasizing around the eyes. The nøkk’s legs gave out and Rasmussen collapsed, rapidly diminishing, seeming to burn without heat and transforming to ash with the speed of his blood gunk pumping iron poison through him. Seconds passed, a minute, then two, and there was nothing left of the proud violinist but a too-large pile of ash.

The ash was wet, clumpy, breaking apart like a sandcastle beaten by tidewater. She heard the door to the room opened wide behind her with an oil-beseeching creak.

Heather nudged holes in the wet ash with her boot as Sulaiman spoke behind her. “The estate is clear, Commander.” He paused. “I see you’ve begun cleaning up without us.”

She smiled and dug her rapier’s end into the ash, swirling it. “It seems Rasmussen cleans up after himself, _ mon ami.” _

“I see.”

Heather turned and met his eyes. “We have a new problem.”

\---------------------------

Heather tossed the remaining mead in a swallow and set the tankard on her thigh, looking up and taking in the various rapt expressions around her with a kind of weary amusement. “We gathered Rasmussen’s ashes and burned them with the rest, mixed them in, and called it a day.” She looked to Sarechay and shrugged apologetically. “Most of the carpets are ruined-”

_ “Carpets!” _Roebuck nearly howled. “Carpet my wood axe and the wood under my ass!” He slapped the sturdy wood next to his own cup. “I haven’t had so fine a tale at the table since I was too small to see over one without standin’ onna chair, tell it!”

Bale seemed less enthusiastic about the entertainment. He squinted hard at Heather. “You mean to tell us you whisper across the dying, taunt the deities-”

“Flirtin’ with gods, aye, and why not?” Roebuck was having none of Bale’s protest. “She might as well a’ killed a god last night, earned every word. Crown me in the land of the dead long enough without comp’ny and I’d be humpin’ my own throne for relief.”

Sarechay coughed and set her fingers on the table, standing. She looked, much to Heather’s interest, less as though etiquette had been breached and more as though Roebuck had voiced her frame of mind, though nothing was evident in her even tone. “I, for one, have had a remarkable evening.”

The nascent build of conversation turned toward the Countess, sentiments of gratitude and compliments on the meal aired over a few ringing belches.

She nodded with a kind of self-conscious regality. “It’s been delightful, but I’m afraid I’ve one last bit of business to attend before sleep.” Moving away from the chair, she tilted an interrogative with her head at Heather. “Commander, may I impose on you further this evening? I’ve a few questions.”

Heather set her cup on the table and moved her leg off the armrest, standing. “Of course, Countess.”

Roebuck’s hand clapped her on the shoulder. “Done us a good’un, Commander.” He hiccuped and handed her jacket to her. “Come by and whet yer whistle sometime.”

She shot him a smirk. _ “Merci, cher.” _

Sarechay turned toward a door near the staff entranced and made her way toward it, not looking back.

With interest - and nothing so grand as premonition - Heather followed the Countess.

\---------------------------

One hallway became another, and Heather found herself standing behind Sarechay as the Countess placed a hand on a doorknob. No ostentatious gilding this time - only rich, stained wood and burnished brass here as it was throughout House Sarechay, the place a whisper of tigerwood refinement in lieu of affluence bellowed in blue.

Pausing, Sarechay looked back without regarding Heather directly. “What do you expect in a woman, Commander?”

Heather laughed, a genuine thing wrung from her in the face of such a frank question. “I come to the subject with no expectations. It’d be pointless; that’s why they’re so much fun, Countess.”

Sarechay seemed to find something additionally amusing about Heather’s answer. “Is that so?”

_ “C’est vrai. _I covet them most when they’re fresh from the convent.” Heather thought back to a less responsible era when she’d no army to lead. “The church teaches them to deny themselves, and I deny them nothing. Very little is as rewarding as drawing revelation from someone forged in fire and brimstone.”

Sarechay opened her mouth, then pressed her lips together as though containing something. A laugh, maybe. Or outrage. She pushed the door wide and stepped in.

Heather followed and gave the room a cursory inspection. Bedposts caught her gaze and drew it down to a solid frame eschewing space between mattresses and floor. Sturdy, like the longhall table they’d left behind. The frame kept a partial rug pinned under its weight, leaving a sandbar stretch of its length out for bare feet in need of slippers. The rest of the floor shared granite with the walls, smooth, cool in upper New France’s warm summers but doubtless an unkind discovery when midnight needs proclaimed themselves too loudly for such trivial concerns as foot protection against winter. An unlit fireplace interrupted the wall in front of the bed. Against the far wall and situated on an elevated platform next to a trio of prudently small windows, a claw-foot beauty of porcelain and what had to be iron teased Heather’s imagination. On the other side of the fireplace, closer to them, a vanity sat against the wall and hid a clever little seat in the space beneath.

She closed the door quietly behind her and stepped up behind Sarechay, twin aches vying for supremacy.

Sarechay seemed unaware as she spoke. “A wise uncle of mine once said, ‘breached defenses are never closed to one who’s breached them before.’ Has that been your experience, Commander?”

Heather stepped in and dropped her coat, reaching around and smoothing a hand over the front of Sarechay’s dress, hand sliding up and examining where ribs met the underswell of a breast beneath the velvet. She drew the Countess in against herself and craned down, running her nose along the exposed line of neck. “Without exception.” She drew in a slow, luxuriant inhale of salt and clean skin. “Though it’s such a simple matter to issue an invitation. And easier for me.”

There was a moment’s stillness in Sarechay’s body before she pressed back, reaching behind and slipping a hand beneath the hang of Heather’s revolver to grip the leg there, a tense, encouraging pull. “There’re legends where invitations go, Commander. Or are we at ease enough here to dispense with titles?”

“For now.” Heather’s free hand went to the half-bound mess of brown hair impeding her exploration and moved it out of the way, stroking a thumb with the other as though fascinated by the fabric texture. “Are you inviting me or re-inviting me?”

Sarechay’s head moved to allow Heather better access. “Does someone like you need either?”

The ache spread to Heather’s jaw and she opened her mouth, turning lip-brushes to a graze of teeth between words. “Someone like me, Countess Mouse?”

Unthreatening little nails dug into Heather’s thigh. “Do I need to invite you?”

Heather abandoned the terrain of temptation and moved to the other woman’s ear, whispering. _ “Oui. _Invitation and re-invitation.”

“Then stay. I have a fresh need of a guard o’ watch, and your people are numerous and capable enough.” She almost shimmied back and forced Heather to steady her stance. “I’m taking Rasmussen’s old estate and we’ll be spread thin.”

“So you plan to spread after I’ve done the work for you.” Heather slid her hand down below the cinch of waistline and felt a troublesome number of underskirts beneath the lower half of the dress. “Can an ambitious strategist pay her way? More than once?”

“I can pay however often you can serve.”

Heather splayed her fingers and pressed, pushing folds of material beneath the fabric and stroking there, the suggestion of thighs and cleft vague but meaningful. “I accept your re-invitation.”

Sarechay’s hips moved, almost pushing Heather’s hand away but in unthinking eagerness rather than intent. “Then my invitation stands.”

“Singular?”

She clenched her fingers and gathered the little bit of free cloth around Heather’s hip, small, but enough to draw taut against Heather’s ass. “Depends. For now.”

“Then this needs to go.” Heather let go Sarechay’s hair and reached for the low line of velvet. She dipped a finger in and flicked, mocking the tautness. _ “Ce vêtement _ is worse than a habit.”

Sarechay moved away - reluctantly, Heather observed with a measure of satisfaction - letting go the meager captive fold of pant leg and reaching back to undo the bonds keeping the bodice snug against her upper body. Heather endured this for a full minute, watching the ribbon snake through one eyelet then another, then abandoned patience and stepped in again. She threaded her fingers between the remaining criscross and tugged outward, pulling slack into the whole works.

“Commander-”

“If you insist on calling me ‘Commander,’ then you’ve no business issuing orders, Sarechay. I outrank you.”

Heather wound her fingers into the dress just below Sarechay’s hips and pulled, slow, feeling give-to-catch as bodice encountered hips and stretched. Underskirts mounted another resistance and Heather grew impatient, dragging their pinched mass down along with the dress, crouching as she went. Dress and skirts settled around the Countess’s feet like a strangely deflated mushroom cap. Heather looked up and ground out a wry sigh at yet another covering, this a silk slip clinging to legs and buttock, but a continued upward assessment brought reprieve from further obstacles in the form of a bare back.

Standing, Healther slid her hands up the backs of Sarechay’s legs through the slip, following the curve of calf, knee, thigh, the soft rounds of cheek, settling roving fingers in a splayed hold on the faint protrusions of pelvic bone toward the front. She dipped her thumbs inside the waist of the ridiculous underthing, stroking the hard arcs on either side, pressing her hips forward and pulling back with her light grip in synchronous suggestion.

“Your weapons are digging into my back, Commander.”

Heather kept a hand on Sarechay’s hip and used the other to undo the gunbelt, letting it slide to the floor. She kicked off her boots and toed them back with the belt, socked feet cooling immediately against the granite. More one-handed work divested her of the strap and scabbard, awkward fingers manipulating pants buttons from their security and the pants themselves loose.

The shirt remained. Heather saw one of her revolvers pressing into the edge of the Countess’s discarded skirts, the practical steel unforgiving where the mess of velvet and other delicate nonsense wasn’t, turned her nose into Sarechay’s neck again, and sniffed laughter. 

“So glad I could amuse, Commander.”

“Mmm. You had questions.”

“I asked them, if you’ll recall.”

What’d begun life as a tempting ache throbbed its way into agony along the shelf of bone above Heather’s teeth. She opened her mouth and pressed incisors to indent skin, tempting her own control, then lifted them away and satisfied herself with a wide-tongued trail along the lines of tension. “Nnnmhm.” She nipped at the earlobe through the rapidly malforming updo. “If that’s as far as your curiosity extends, I’m going to succumb to boredom quickly, Sarechay.”

Sarechay reached back and gripped Heather’s shirt, giving it a meaningful tug. “And your boredom is a concern of mine, Commander?”

“You said as much at dinner, _ ma souris.” _

“What is that? _ Souris?” _

Heather’s fingers found clips keeping Sarechay’s hair in place and plucked them out, shaking the strands of gems loose. “It means ‘mouse.’”

Sarechay moved in Heather’s light hold and turned, rolling her hand into a grip in the front of Heather’s shirt. She leaned and brushed lips over the material covering Heather’s breast before looking up and pinning her with a look. “I think you’ve forgotten who hired whom, here, Commander.”

Heather held her peace for a moment, enjoying the fall of brown hair. She tossed the irregular gem garland and clips to the bed and captured Sarechay’s chin in her hand. “You hired me to lead. I’m leading.”

“And what do you expect me to do?”

Walking forward, pushing Sarechay in a backwalk, Heather answered, “I expect you to say, ‘please,’ _ ma souris.” _She paused only long enough for Sarechay to avoid tripping in the decompressed mushroom of her own dress, then moved her into the backwalk again. “Until it’s so much meaningless noise drawn from the memory in desperation.” She backed Sarechay until she stood against the bed’s edge, a high thing plush with mattresses. “And then,” Heather half-crouched, gripped hard beneath the swell of Sarechay’s ass and braced her against her shirt-clad chest, lifting, dropping her into a splay-legged seat on the cover, “I expect gratitude.”

Sarechay fell back on her elbows. Heather watched the rest of her hair - no longer interested in mimicking the restrained ‘do - fall forward, and appreciated that it wasn’t long enough to hide much beyond the shoulders. She wedged herself between Sarechay’s legs and began undoing the buttons of her own shirt.

The Countess seemed at once nonplussed and amused. “Gratitude.”

“You invited me and set me to task, did you not?”

“To task? I’m not a chore, Commander.”

Heather widened her stance and spread Sarechay’s legs as far as they’d go in the frustrating confines of the slip, wrangling a button midway down. “You wear too much for leisure.”

“I wear what I like.”

“Then you _enjoy_ being difficult.”

“Toy with me, and I’ll see to it you have a nightmare.”

Buttons undone, Heather slid her hands up Sarechay’s legs, both marveling at the softness and inwardly cursing at the slip. The latter was proving a dastardly taut thing half-trapped beneath spread thighs.

Heather thumbed the fabric underneath and lifted as she worked backward, inching the silk away. Trim brown hair surrounded a goal finally unveiled and she lifted again, Sarechay taking the hint and half-crawling back until Heather had enough space on the bed to kneel. This she did, wedging herself in again, her hands on Sarechay’s ass and lifting. She pushed in with her hips, not enough for a working feel of all the gathered flesh at the juncture between Sarechay’s legs but enough to tease the woman’s longer clitoris with a persistent, meaningful impact. Sarechay hazed between a groan and an exhale, pushing little fists into the smooth cotton blanket.

Heather backed away, falling to her own elbows, and lifted first one thigh then another over her shoulders. She let one of her own legs slide straight behind her and left the other bent. Thumbs keeping the mess of silk from getting under her nose, she craned forward and patted the tip of Sarechay’s clit with her tongue before delving lower, pushing the flat of her tongue and drawing it up in a half-suck just below the rooted network of nerves that bedded there.

Sarechay’s first real vocalization was almost negation - _ nhhhn - _then Heather felt the weight change in her shoulders as the Countess stopped pushing into the mattress with her hands and found Heather’s hair, sluicing into it, holding Heather down as her thighs squeezed and hips ground.

Sucking, grinding back, pushing through Sarechay’s insistent hold long enough to gather building slickness from lower still and spreading it up with her tongue, Heather’s own hips shifted in sympathetic undulation. The ache moved again in her mouth and she held it as she held her own breath between moments of respite, a flick, another root-grinding press of tongue. The low dips were unnecessary but vital, and Heather found herself swallowing as much to let Sarechay feel her doing so as to breathe.

It was a whisper, whine, a squeak. _ “Please.” _

The ache above Heather’s teeth grew vicious. She answered with a crueler grind of the tongue to the base and halfway up the clit, bruising, rhythmic, fluttering the muscle to an almost vibratory speed.

Sarechay wasn’t hissing anymore but begging. _ “Please.” _ A breath. _ “Please, please-” _

_ She’s there. _Too much of Heather’s face was buried in Sarechay to miss the slow first clench, the crescendo’s precursor.

Heather pushed back against Sarechay’s hands and crawled up, running a wide, slick trail through hair, pausing to bypass the slip, up again, detouring to a single nipple then back to the journey with a new goal in mind. She straddled one of Sarechay’s legs. She lowered herself until they were pressed together, Heather’s tongue laving Sarechay’s neck, cooler skin against Sarechay’s warmer, panting almost as hard as the Countess herself.  
  
“Do you want it? Will you come?”

Sarechay clamped Heather’s thigh between her own and worked greedily against it. “I’m. _ Yes _I’m-”

Heather ground back. “Do you invite me?”

_ “Yes,” _ Sarechay’s grip - hands and not - tightened. _ “Yes, come with me.” _

There wasn’t time to answer. Heather opened her mouth against Sarechay’s neck, let the ache draw down from above her incisors, and sank them. Sarechay came in shrieks like heartbeats, digging nails into the back of Heather’s shirt.

Heather came, swallowing in tune with those heartbeats, drowning in salt and tang and helplessness.

They lay like that, listening to New France’s nightlife croak and chitter outside the windows. Heather licked red from flushed skin until even the faint welling ceased. She moved only enough to grab a handful of the blanket and drag it over them, content to leave herself mostly draped over Sarechay.

There were no words, only tangled limbs and purring in the dark. And sleep.

\---------------------------

The next afternoon, Heather took to the stables. She’d been promised a steed, being the Commander of House Sarechay’s new guard, and Bale had directed her to the northernmost stable after the Countess, with a strange smile, agreed to donate some of her more “unusual” horseflesh to the Commander’s needs.

The barn was small, fit only for a single horse. It was largely stonework, too, rather than the standard wood. Heather tugged the heavy door open and looked inside.

A horse stood there. 

Technically, it _ was _a horse. There was a horse shape silhouetted against more shadow from morning light’s unhelpful angle. Mulish, disputatious orange eyes glared at her from inside the barn.

Heather stared back. The horse lowered its head and snorted, spewing twin streamers of flame that singed the thin spread of hay overtop what might’ve been flagstones. Some of it smoldered.

_ Toy with me, and I’ll see to it you have a nightmare. _

Heather dropped her hand from the door and exhaled in a weary gust.

_ “Merde.” _

**Author's Note:**

> Lore:
> 
> \- This is an alternate-history Earth, one which experienced a kind of magic cataclysm when beings of magic (of virtually every conceivable type) tested Earth's capacity to accommodate their magic presence en masse to destruction. As magic receded to a lesser level, only those of mixed magic being and human heritage could survive. Earth's magic capacity has begun to rise again, and the world is seeing a reemergence of full-fledged magic beings.
> 
> \- Gods and goddesses from all corners of the world have come into being in planes/realms of existence that can sustain them. This includes Hel, who has a vested interest in Heather since Heather's existence indicates the return of vampires. The interest is more than strictly scientific. "Speaking across planes" to these divine beings is possible with a sufficient magical concentration and tie to that realm.
> 
> \- The cataclysm saw a massive reduction in strict/orthodox adherence to most of the world's rising religions - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc. - and their weight in the world is vastly diminished. Most popular/"modern" religions feature deities too broadly-perceived to manifest, but the effect of faith falls within the sphere of magic.


End file.
